Akeem Lasisi
Seasoned poet and scholar, Professor Remi Raji, has sought to establish an intimate relationship between a poet and language.
According to him, the poet has the responsibility of engaging language as a lover.
He made this known recently when he narrated his experience during a book party organised for the poets on the longlist of the Nigeria Prize for Literature.
The event organised by the Committee for Relevant Arts, on behalf of the founders of the $100,000 prize – Nigeria LNG Limited – was held at the MUSON Centre, Lagos.
Raji is in the competition with his collection, Wanderer Cantos.
According to the author of other works that include include Webs of Remembrance (2001), Shuttlesongs America: A poetic guided tour (2003) and Lovesong for My Wasteland (2005), the poet has a role in language and communal development.
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He said, “Poetry is about capability, to be able to represent others, playing a role, helping people and it’s a proverbial golden knife that can punch holes in the conscience of people. Poetry is advanced speech, so to say.”
“My sixth collection was published in 2013. So, between then and the time I did the seventh one, there has been a lot of wandering on my part, and I constantly engage in dialogue with my land, because I believe I put it in one of my poems, that a poet’s first duty is to make love to language, to land and liberty, and this has been my mantra overtime since I published my first collection in 1997.
So, I took time, close to a decade, to come up with my collection. They are new experiences and encounters, journeys and meeting new people, and there’s always that engagement with the land in a sense that I find myself and so many other poets as unacknowledged legislators of my land, someone who tries to speak for those who are incapable of speaking, and that is why I bring in the language of the streets to poetry to popularise the language.”
